The Best You Can Hope for in the Hoosegow is a Sealy Posturpedic

Consider this story of misdirected holiday hopes, broadcast last week on NPR:

Richard Perez of Lake Station, Indiana, wanted to impress his beloved wife by giving her a plasma television this Christmas. The rub was that he didn’t actually feel compelled to *pay* for the TV.

At this point, a little Grinchian ingenuity kicked in, and Richard brainstormed: “Hear me out on this, brain: I work as a security guard at the Radisson, and that’s a company, right? And it’s companies what sell stuff, right? And sometimes they don’t even sell stuff but even give it way, right? Plus the really good companies sometimes call that giving away dealie ‘a holiday bonus,’ right? And can I even help it if the Radisson Company Place is too busy or cheap or confused to sort out its holiday bonuses this year? Well, I can kind of help it, I suppose. I could help them bonus me because they are, after all, a Company Place, and I do work there. Has anybody seen my box of wine? I got the Peachy Reunite’ the other day on clearance at the Chug ‘N Drop.”

Enjoy the wine, you criminal genius; that job at the Radisson? Not for long, Poor Richard. Not for long.

His mind made up, Perez punched in at work (“If I’m on the property, I’m on the clock, baby. Hey, how long ’til my break? I need a Marlboro but bad”) and shortly thereafter, forgetting all about the hotel’s surveillance cameras–as a security guard, why *would* he remember?–he enlisted the aid of his favorite righthand man and best friend: an empty luggage cart.

Entering an unoccupied room, Perez loaded up Best Friend with a 42-inch plasma TV and a Sleep Number bed system (one of those doohickies that can adjust mattress position and firmness). Knowing that a plasma TV and a Sleep Number bed system might, *cough cough*, look suspicious on a luggage cart, especially as he rolled them out of the hotel and up to his idling van, Richard cleverly disguised the cart by draping a sheet over it. (“In all my years here at the Radisson as a security guard, I know I’ve never stopped anyone and asked ’em, ‘Yo, what you got under that sheet on your luggage cart, Mortimer?’ I don’t dis people like that, and plus also the customer is always right, and some people might just need a sheet over a luggage cart, like me tonight as I bonus myself.”)

On tiny cat feet, he then slyly hoisted the goods into his getaway vehicle, drove home–gunning it to 80 mph all the way–and wrapped up the TV for his wife (in my mind, she is named Carlene), sticking it under the tree with a card that read: “To Mom, Honeybunny, from Big Papa, Daddy.” Then he retired to the comfort of his newly-positioned and firmed mattress, watching the old TV and hollering, “NOOOO deal” at Howie Mandel, until…

…the police showed up, warrant in hand, to cuff Big Papa (reading him his Veranda Rights), ruin Carlene’s Christmas, and take a quick joy ride on the Sleep Number. In true Spinal Tap fashion, they were overheard directing Newbie Officer David St. Hubbins, “Crank it to Eleven!”

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Published by Jocelyn

There's this game put out by the American Girl company called "300 Wishes"--I really like playing it because then I get to marvel, "Wow, it's like I'm a real live American girl who has 300 wishes, and that doesn't suck, especially compared to being a dead one with none."
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You know, I really wish he’d gotten away with it. I stayed at a Radisson once, and found them to be the scuzziest, snottiest, worst hotel chain I ever tried to sleep in. I’m not surprised they neglected to give bonuses. The bastards.